The World According to Jeff

It's Monday morning rush hour throughout Santa Fe, but Agua Fria
Village seems to have escaped unscathed. One can sense the mounting
traffic snarls on either side of this rural swath of land carved out of
the southwest side of the city, but there's no hard evidence. A warm,
quiet wind whooshes across the tumbling plots of high grass and over
the beat-up vintage cars and ramshackle adobe homes which adorn the
village's plots in perfect disorder, as if exhibits placed there by a
museum curator.

On the horizon, in place of the unsightly string of nearby chain stores
or the rickety skeletons of fresh housing developments, are the still
shadows of the Sangre De Cristo mountains, ***image11***watching and perhaps waiting
for something to happen.

A world away, Jeff Branch slows his shimmering dark blue Audi into the
parking lot of Bagelmania near downtown and hops out, pushing his
sunglasses back into a head of silky, black hair.

Dressed in a slightly oversized, and decidedly unfashionable, off-green
T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, Branch barely turns a head as he strolls
through the sparse pre-breakfast crowd of state workers, Plaza business
owners and sun-splotched tourists, positioning his short, unassuming
physique into a chair at a back table.

Save one older, heavyset man who nearly leaps out of his seat to greet
Branch as he passes, nobody notices. Branch, who has the bronzed skin
of partially Hispanic parents and the boyish-turned-slightly-paunchy
good looks of an ex-high school football player still pining for his
golden years, is probably just another local here for a bagel and
coffee before punching in, for all they know.

As it happens, such an assessment isn't too far off. A "local homeboy"
is how a close friend described Branch to a reporter years ago-born and
raised with his two brothers in the Casa Solana neighborhood across the
street from Mayor Larry Delgado's family; a popular high school athlete
who went away for college but came back to work for his family; another
Hispanic boy with an Anglo last name in a town where such a seemingly
***image10***remarkable contradiction isn't all that remarkable.

Somewhere along the way, though, this homeboy became one of the most
powerful men in Santa Fe. In less than a decade's time, Jeff Branch has
played a huge role in altering the landscape of the city. This is
particularly true on the south side, where Branch has lured national
chains despite rural residents who view such change as corporate
colonization, and who have fought doggedly to maintain their way of
life.

Branch has managed to overcome such resistance using an intuitive,
often breathtaking, fusion of what admirers call business savvy,
political skill and charisma. Enemies prefer words like "arrogance,"
"force" and "guile."

Regardless of the perspective, one thing is certain: Over the last
decade, as the city, county, neighborhood associations, urban planners
and even developers have scrambled to react to Santa Fe's tumbling
sprawl, Branch has emerged from the scrum as the one ***image8***man who truly
realizes that the only real impediment to building up the south side is
a lack of chutzpa. Subsequently, he's been able to work the system time
and time again, surprising people with bold projects and pushing them
through before there are laws on the books to stop him.

Nothing epitomizes the unique position Branch occupies more than his
94-acre San Isidro development, which includes the southern cut of land
abutting Agua Fria Village, and is one of the largest and most complex
projects the city has ever encountered.

Indeed, even with the development a done deal via an annexation
agreement passed March 30, some city officials are still scratching
their heads wondering if they've given away the farm.

By now, though, that feeling of bewilderment following a Jeff Branch
project must be familiar. After all, city councilors have been dealing
with him since he was, essentially, just a boy.

"You could see how personable he was, even back then," Cathy Zacher,
president of the Santa Fe Economic Development Inc., past president of
the Chamber of Commerce and Jeff Branch's first grade teacher at
Gonzales Elementary School, says. "He was this really nice
little guy and really well liked."

Well liked, and with politics and ambition pulsing through his blood,
Jeff Branch grew up the oldest of ***image9***three boys to Michael and Maida
Branch.

He talks proudly of his family lineage. Alexander Branch, a merchant
and trapper, came to Santa Fe in the early 19th century. His son later
became speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives in 1890. But
it's Jeff Branch's father, a former city councilor, who had the most
impact on him growing up.

"I remember when my dad was on the Council, all the councilors would
get together and barbecue and have a few beers," Branch says between
bites of a veggie omelette. "Back then it seemed like they were all
really connected to their community."

When he wasn't at city hall, Michael Branch ran an office machine
business and hammered home a relentless work ethic in his son. As a
teenager Jeff sold flower seeds door to door, ran a newspaper route and
worked a summer gig at the New Mexico State Corporation Commission.

Despite the relatively easy childhood, the family roots and a
burgeoning business sense, Branch left town after high school for
Arizona State University. "I wanted to get out of Santa Fe," he says
with a sheepish laugh. "And ASU had good-looking girls."

ASU also was largely Anglo and, as a student of color, Branch underwent
a new, and sometimes painful, experience. "I really got to see what
prejudice was primarily because of my skin," Branch says, his smile
gone. "Everybody was always asking what I was and where I was from.
People thought I was from Iran, Hawaii. It all opened my eyes to where
I'd grown up."

What ASU didn't provide in diversity it did in opportunity. Through the
school's architecture and urban planning ***image3***program, Branch began doing
commercial appraisals for a Newport Beach, California firm that was
buying up property in Phoenix. After graduation, in 1985,
Branch decided to come home and work for his father in the same
industry. (Michael Branch had started selling property in 1980 to round
out income from his office machine business; he let Jeff handle
commercial appraisals.)

But the younger Branch struggled. Thinking he'd have better luck in
Albuquerque, Branch took out a loan to open his own office and began
knocking on doors and making cold calls, trying desperately to bring
business up in Santa Fe. After countless dead ends, Branch finally sold
Lovelace Health Systems, a building on St. Michael's, and made his
first commission: $40,000.

"I felt like I'd been starving for too long, so this was such a
relief," he says. "I was able to pay off a lot of debtors from that one
sale." That one sale sparked Branch's interest in development, and
would lead to his first official dealings with city government. It did
not go well.

Shortly after the Lovelace deal, Branch appeared before the Santa Fe
Historic Design Review Board seeking approval to build a fourplex
apartment complex on Agua Fria Street adjacent to the Railyard. The
proposal was rejected. Branch doesn't remember why. He remembers how
furious he was.

"I couldn't understand why because it was this really neat idea," he
says, trying to laugh away the tinge of anger which still lingers in
his voice. "I went to Sam Pick, the mayor at the time, and I told him I
needed to sit on the Historic Design Review Board because they're not
following the rules."

In 1986, at age 23, Branch became the board's youngest member,
determined to learn the machinations of a system which he was convinced
had done him wrong.

"He was this little guy with unbelievable energy and a 'Type A'
personality. You should have seen him. I just loved him," Pick says.

Five years later, Branch appeared again before ***image4***city officials, this time with a bigger and better plan. Or so he thought.

Branch and friend Joaquin Sanchez had come up with the idea to put a
brew pub in the old Agua Fria neighborhood where Branch had grown up.
The two met every week devising a business plan, crisscrossed the
country researching brew pub culture and signed a lease on the old Home
Bakery building at the corner of Agua Fria Street and Dunlap Street
near the Railyard, which they thought was the perfect venue.

Branch and Sanchez envisioned a lively community pub with prices locals
could afford. Neighbors envisioned those same locals staggering home
drunk through their properties. They fought Branch and Sanchez tooth
and nail.

After a bitter debate before the City Council, Frank Montaño, Branch's
old little league coach, cast the deciding vote against the pub.

"I felt really bad going against him. Even back then, he was so
hard-working and such a go-getter," Montaño says. "I could have voted
either way that night."

Branch, though, was crushed.

"I couldn't believe it. These old ladies shut us down. They just fought
us," he says. "I was too cocky. I tried to shove it down their throats
because I was convinced this was what was right and good for the
neighborhood. It really hurt."

Incredulous the city had denied their project, Branch and Sanchez hired
a lawyer and fired off a letter to the state liquor board, which had
granted them a liquor license for the pub. Subsequently, the City
Council was forced to file a lawsuit against the state-which supported
the liquor board's decision-to uphold its ruling. The court battle
lasted for nearly five years. Branch eventually won the suit but
decided it was too late to build. Besides, he'd made his point to the
city: Spurn Jeff Branch and run the risk of incurring a serious
migraine.

Conversely, Branch learned he couldn't steamroll neighborhood
associations. They were organized like Roman centuries, wielded
political clout and could embarrass a developer if respect wasn't shown.

"When Jeff was first starting out, he began to realize that this wasn't
going to be easy street," says Zacher. "People would like him and think
he's a great guy. But that didn't necessarily mean they'd like his
development ideas."

During the mid '90s, however, it seemed to Branch that the city's
growth spurt was creating an environment ripe for development,
regardless of what the city thought. He pushed on.

It was 1996 when Branch helped dream up another bold project. This time
it was a 38-acre shopping complex across from the Villa Linda Mall on
property owned by the wealthy Zafarano family and anchored by Target
and Albertson's.

This project brought to Santa Fe the national ***image12***debate over the volatile
relationship between smaller communities and large chains. The
population of Santa Fe and the surrounding area, between 1990 and 2000,
had grown by 13,000. Half of that growth was happening in the southwest
sector of the metro area.

"When we started growing, suddenly all the corporate chains were
interested," says Karen Heldmeyer who served on the city's Planning
Commission before being elected to City Council and remembers how the
Zafarano proposal helped spark dialogue over large big box stores like
Target. "People were distressed with the project because it made them
think about whether we really wanted these big chains." Opponents of
big boxes think squeezing such mammoth stores into places like Santa Fe
ultimately drives out local businesses and forever changes the
aesthetic of wherever they're built.

Branch, on the other hand, argued that such stores sell everything
anyone could possibly need, provide a direct link to the manufacturers,
typically keep prices low and are a source of jobs.

By now a seasoned veteran of land battles, he was able to sell the city
on that same logic, convincing the Council to let Target finance the
building of a four-lane Zafarano Road to ease traffic. Branch also
secured $350,000 from Target to relocate more than 85 families living
in a mobile home park where the development was to be built to separate
property owned by the Zafaranos.

"Jeff proved himself very capable in terms of taking advantage of the
system," says realtor and city hall junkie Sara Melton, who remembers
watching Branch work his magic in front of the City Council. "He would
take on a project like this which a lot of other developers didn't have
the political will to see through."

Shortly after the second phase of the development began in January
2000, which included the building of Old Navy and Linens 'N Things, the
City Council realized what had happened. With Branch whispering
reassuringly in their ear, they'd swung the door to big box development
wide open with nary a restriction. That July, the Council authorized
the city's Planning Department to look into big box stores and their
effect on Santa Fe.

"We were trying to look into it as a way for existing communities to
work on making the development of large retail stores more appropriate
for Santa Fe," Tamara Baer, then the city planner who drafted the
ordinance, says. Out of Baer's research came the aptly named "big box
***image5***ordinance," which passed a year later. The ordinance imposed design
standards on retail stores, such as the use of varied architecture
designs, specific parking lot sizes and required any new store be less
than 150,000 square feet. Branch frowns slightly at the mention of the
ordinance.

"I think there are some good things and things that don't make any
sense," he says, referring to the requirements on parking lot design
mandated by the ordinance. "It'll have to be amended as time goes on."
Still, Branch had won approval of a significant project. On its heels,
in 1998, he turned his attention towards another national chain.

Whole Foods, Branch thought, wouldn't spark the type of opposition he
was used to getting. The chain's organic products and left-leaning
sensibility would be the perfect fit for Santa Fe.

Working his connections, Branch was able to convince Whole Foods that
Santa Fe, specifically the intersection of Cerrillos and Gilmore, was
right for them too.

But he'd forgotten the lesson he'd learned from the brew pub, and, once
again, Branch underestimated the might of the local neighbors, who were
aghast at the prospect of more traffic.

That misjudgment would explode in Branch's face at a sit-down at the
Hotel Santa Fe he'd arranged between Whole Foods brass and the
neighborhood association. Over macaroni and cheese, courtesy of Whole
Foods, somebody from Branch's camp popped in an informational video
about the store.

"The neighborhood association went ballistic. They started throwing the
macaroni and cheese at the television and saying 'You're not going to
bribe us with your products!'" he says. "I ***image13***think it was Karen Heldmeyer
who walked up the television and turned it off."

According to Branch, the Whole Foods people "freaked."

"They came up to me after the meeting and said, 'What the hell did you
do to us?'" Branch laughs. Branch says he calmed them down and
facilitated nearly a dozen more meetings out of which the project was
reworked, community concerns about traffic were assuaged and all
parties were satisfied. Heldmeyer, who was president of the Santa Fe
Neighborhood Network (a consortium of the city's neighborhood
associations) at the time, remembers the story differently.

"What I recall is Jeff putting on this video," she says. "People were getting angrier and angrier, and I said, 'If
you want to have a meeting with us then turn off the video.' Meanwhile,
Jeff kept shouting, 'This is WHOLE FOODS! This is WHOLE FOODS! You need
to be more respectful!'"

The Whole Foods people ended up having to push Branch out of the way at
the so they could deal with the neighborhood association, Heldmeyer
says.

Ultimately, though, the project was approved in 1999 and Whole Foods
became one of the most popular grocery stores in Santa Fe. Jeff Branch
was 37 years old. Between Zafarano and Whole Foods he'd already,
arguably, impacted Santa Fe more than the Ike Pinos, the Dickie
Montoyas and his father's generation of developers who came before him.
San Isidro, however, was going to be his legacy.

The land on the southern end of Agua Fria Village-rural, unincorporated
and within the clutches of Santa Fe's commercial sprawl-has made
developers weak in the knees since the late 1980s.

For nearly 12 years, the Connecticut-based ***image6***company SMAT, Inc had tried
to build retail and warehouse space there, from Cerrillos Road to where
the Rufina Street extension is now. But they'd clashed too hard with
the people of Agua Fria Village, one of the area's oldest, toughest,
most entrenched land-based neighborhoods.

Further, Agua Fria residents were both battle tested and smart. They
had fought off numerous development and annexation proposals, and they
had learned how to politic.

They are people like Ramon and Hazel Romero, whose family has owned the
same skinny tract of property since the 17th century and who took 12
years to build a traditional, Spanish family style house with their
bare hands.

"I remember that Connecticut developer cursing at me in Italian to a
friend of his at a city meeting," Ramon Romero says. "And I cursed him
right back in Spanish."

After SMAT's effort floundered, local developer Ike Pino tried his luck but he couldn't convince the Agua Frians to sell either.

Meanwhile, Jeff Branch was keeping a watchful eye. Finally, in 2001,
riding the wave of the Zafarano project and Whole Foods, he struck.

His idea was to build a 92-acre development with a 14-screen movie
theater, 109,000-squarefoot Lowe's Home Improvement store and 264
homes-essentially a small city on top of an area which had refused to
give up its rural character. Branch knew the ***image7***most imposing roadblock
was the people of Agua Fria Village. The development would not directly
effect the village itself, designated a Traditional Historic Community
(THC). But it would impact some residents' land plots on the southern
side. Those portions of the land fell outside the THC and lay in the
extraterritorial zone that is a combination of city and county land.
Branch's plan was to annex the land-thus putting it under city
jurisdiction so it could receive city services. But first he needed
buy-in from rural residents who had resisted annexation for years.

Beginning in 2001 and for several years after, he called Agua Frians
like the Romeros. He chatted with them about their hopes and fears for
the neighborhood and listened politely on back porches as they pointed
out the arroyos they played in as children or how beautiful the Sangres
looked at sunset from their property.

And then towards the end, like a young doctor bearing bad news, he told them quietly that their time had come.

What Branch discovered was that the old Agua Frians had known this day
was inevitable all along-that they could either sell to a local
Hispanic whom they knew, or to some fast-talking East Coast-er. They
could either die for a fair price or live staring at the sterile
backside of a big box store.

"Jeff actually listened to us, and we took him for his word," says Ramon. "We knew what was happening around us."

After the Romeros agreed to sell last year, the 34 families who either
lived in the village or owned property there fell in line. During a
series of subsequent meetings, Branch and the villagers came up with
the name San Isidro-the patron saint of agriculture and the namesake of
the church on Agua Fria.

When San Isidro reached the City Council in 2005, councilors were
shocked at the massive amount of water San Isidro would soak up-105
acre-feet of water a year. Over time, however, councilors softened,
especially after Branch agreed to provide water for half of the
project, not including the 30 percent of the project which was
affordable housing ***image14***and to which the city is legally obligated to dole
out free water, and to retrofit toilets for the other half.

"What originally persuaded me was that Jeff had done a lot of homework
on San Isidro," says Councilor David Coss. "And that he'd gotten so
many families involved, that there was no neighborhood or community
opposition to the plan."

Councilor Heldmeyer still fretted the city was granting annexation to a
project without a final, formal proposal of what it really entailed,
but even she wasn't going to take Branch on at this point. And so, with
the all-consuming water issue taken care of, the Council voted 7-0 to
approve annexation on March 30 (Carol Robertson-Lopez was not in
attendance). Soon after, Mike Loftin, executive director of Homewise,
an affordable housing development group, called Coss. Loftin wanted to
know why Branch's project did not meet the Regional Planning
Authority's (RPA) recommendations on affordable housing.

Loftin, who'd sat on the RPA's Affordable Housing Task
Force earlier that year, had helped write the recommendations. He told
Coss that he'd met with Branch and explained to him what those
guidelines were.

Specifically, Branch needed to make 10 percent of his affordable
housing homes available at $115,000, another 10 percent at $145,000 and
the final 10 percent at $180,000.

San Isidro's affordable housing units, on the other hand, were going to
be sold at $154,176, $189,755 and $237,194-hardly affordable, says
Loftin-and use free water from the city in the process.

What's more, a memo from Richard Gorman, Branch's partner on the
project, reserved the developer's right to expand the percentage of
affordable housing units and ***image15***keep the free water flowing. To Loftin, it
looked like the city had been duped.

Coss immediately called Branch, who'd just returned from Russia where
he and his wife Michelle were planning on adopting a baby boy.

"I asked him what was going on. The project had been
presented by him and Richard as if it met the guidelines," says Coss.
"We'd voted the way we did on a major annexation because of what they
told us. Let's just say I was very disappointed."

The problem was that the RPA recommendations had not yet been codified.
Branch told ***image16***Coss that no one, not Loftin nor anyone from the city's
community housing division, had ever informed him what they were. In
fact, according to Branch, Linda Hall, director of community housing,
had told him his prices were fine. (Hall would not return SFR's phone
calls for this story).

Initially Branch refused to backtrack on the terms of the annexation,
saying he had dug so deep in his pockets for the Agua Fria
properties-nearly $20 million- that he couldn't afford to sell the San
Isidro homes for anything less than what's on the table. ***image17***Subsequently,
however, Branch decided to drop each third of his affordable housing
prices to a range of costs, as opposed to a single price, because he
says his builder told him it was indeed feasible. The lower half of
each range now comes closer to the RPA guidelines, he says. He bristles
at the idea that he acted disingenuously.

"Nobody ever brought up these recommendations to me," he says. "We had
an agreement with city staff on the pricing of those homes. What we
said in front of Council is what we agreed to with the city."

Branch disputes Loftin ever told him anything about the recommendations.

"It's an absolute lie," Branch says. "I got in his face. I told him
don't appreciate you ratting me out like you're a little kid. That's
bullshit! If we had known about it on the front end, we would have done
it!"

Loftin, a bear of a man who's every bit as personable as Branch, grins as he recalls the encounter.

"I said to Jeff afterwards, 'Hey, I told you about this,'" he says.
"What he promised to the city in terms of affordable housing was
misrepresented, because it wouldn't have been approved." Says
Heldmeyer: "This was something the city should have worked out. I'm not
going to fault San Isidro for this."

Once more, Branch had shown a knack for shoving a huge project through
a small crack in existing regulations before the city knew what hit
them. Once more, the city was forced to react after being outfoxed
again by the little guy from Casa Solana. Once more Branch had dictated
the terms.

After San Isidro was approved and the land annexed, Branch knew the
opportunity was now. In April of this year he proposed Colores
Plaza/Colores de Sol-a 74-acre development with numerous shops and
nearly 300 residential units to be built at the intersection of Airport
Road and South Meadows.

Within two months Branch received annexation from the City Council
despite the fretting of local neighborhood association leaders who felt
that Branch had been insensitive to their concerns, his old ***image18***albatross
dating back to the brew pub days.

"Jeff told us pretty much that this is what he was going to do and that
everything was already all settled," Joanna Garcia, president of the
Tiempos Lindos Homeowners Association, whose neighborhood sits adjacent
to Colores, says. "When I asked about the affordability of the houses,
he laughed and told me that if I didn't think this housing is
affordable then move to Rio Rancho. It really pissed me off."

Even his detractors, though, admit that Branch at this point is nearly impossible to stop, neighborhood associations or not.

"Jeff is a very adept businessman who tends to get the deal he wants,"
Mike Loftin says. Because of that uncanny, dogged ability, in a very
short time, Santa Fe will look considerably different. San Isidro will
go up and so will Colores, and the tumbling plots of grass, the beat-up
vintage cars and the ramshackle homes around the Agua Fria Village will
be gone. Old timers like the Romeros will go too, having moved away to
some unsettled tract of land with hopes of living out the rest of their
lives just as they started.

At the Romeros' request, Branch has vowed to turn their beloved house
into a community center for San Isidro's seniors, a memorial of sorts
to a time and place no longer here.

The prospect of leaving the only place they've ever lived still sends a
searing pain through Ramon's stomach, and Hazel's eyes water when she
walks through the home she helped build so many years ago.

To Branch, though, it all makes perfect sense.

"I know they were torn about the land. But at the end of the day, the
Romeros realized I was someone they could sell to and that I was going
to preserve as much as I could," Branch says. "Because, in the end,
Santa Fe is going to grow anyway."